Did Shia LaBeouf rip off a Daniel Clowes comic for his short film?http://ift.tt/1hXLeV2
If you look at the plot of Shia La Bouef’s short film Howard Cantour, it sounds exactly like Daniel Clowes’s short comic Justin M. Damiano, which appeared in Zadie Smith’s Anthology of Short FIction, The Book of Other People. La Beouf:
Jim Gaffigan gives a perfect deadpan performance as movie critic “Howard Cantour”, spending his time flirting with freelancer cutie Dakota, played by Portia Doubleday. The film actually says some great things about cinema, but also does a nice job making fun of the movie critic world. That said, it’s actually quite well done without being too condescending and an enjoyable watch. Have fun.
and Clowes (reprinted with the author’s permission)
LaBeouf’s film screened at the Cannes Film Festival and has been well received — but not in the Clowes household, as the cartoonist told Buzzfeed:
“The first I ever heard of the film was this morning when someone sent me a link. I’ve never spoken to or met Mr. LaBeouf,” Clowes told BuzzFeed. “I’ve never even seen one of his films that I can recall — and I was shocked, to say the least, when I saw that he took the script and even many of the visualLaBeoufs from a very personal story I did six or seven years ago and passed it off as his own work. I actually can’t imagine what was going through his mind.”
According to sources close to the situation, everyone at Fantagraphics is hopping mad at what seems to be outright idea theft.
LaBeouf’s camp hasn’t responded, although the film has been made pass-word protected for now. It isn’t the first time LaBeouf has been accused of plagiarism—an angry letter to Alec Baldwin over their Broadway appearance in Orphans LaBeouf leaked to the press was found to have been lifted from Esquire.
LaBeouf is a known indie comcis fan, who has been flirting with the medium over the last few years.
More to come on this!
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